Thought processes and conversations started under the tilted cap of Tropicana Field. Someday everyone will know the Rays play in St. Petersburg, Florida, not TAMPA, or the fictitious city of TAMPA BAY.

Not My Usual Christmas Eve Greeting

I have been known to be a holiday Grinch to some people because they try and force the holiday on me like a certain religious sect located here in Clearwater, Florida. I have always been, and will always be a true believer in the spirit of the holidays and of everything involved with them.

As a kid , I was the house decorator, both inside and out. It was my job to put up the lights and also do the tree setup after we brought it home. The family as a whole did the final Christmas tree trimmings, but I put the lights in the branches and made sure the tree was very secure and would not fall on us when we began decorating it. I took great pride in doing this, because I had the Christmas spirit, not because it was a job to me.

And even though the last several days, some people might give me a mulligan for thinking like this during this holiday season. But I am not built like that, if I make a commitment, I am there by any means possible, but this year it took a bit more than just desire and will power. I do not show weakness very often, and when I do my friends know it is real and not put on for their enjoyment or my own self amusement.

As some of you might know, I was at a friend’s house last weekend and was playing football on the soft white sands of Clearwater Beach, when I went in for a open field tackle on a friend’s son and got him in stride, but on the way down got plucked in the right ear with a thud. I got right up with no blood or even any small aches, but of course, being a Christmas party, I did have a few medicating rum concoctions running through my veins.

Well, as a old football guy, I did not show any weakness the rest of the night and went home and slept until maybe 8 pm the following day. Since I did not anticipate any job interview requests on that day, I put my cellphone to silent. About 9 pm, I had three people at the door while I was watching reruns of a “Real Chance at Love” on VH-1. Well they saw me do a little wobble at the door and they stayed a bit to be sure the old guy was okay.

That is when you know you have a true friend, when they see through the BS and call you on it like a ref with that little yellow hankie. Well, they saw my ear was blossoming up like a nice floret of cauliflower and tried to talk me into going to the ER to be cautious. Well, the last time I hit that ER near me, I did not see the light of day, and missed the entire home series against the New York Yankees in April 2007.

All I had then was three small brown recluse spider bites that bloomed up into huge bulbs the minute I took some antibiotics I had around the house. Well, after sitting there that night on my stomach for three hours while they cut the dying skin off my back of the knee, waistline spot, and my right index finger, I was set alone in a ER extra room and they tried to let me sleep off the medications while I was waiting for a bed upstairs.

Long story short…………5 days per-longed hospital visit…………$ 2,000 dollar headache after wards. I was not discharged on time because the doctor forgot to come see me on a Monday, and almost missed another home series because of him. Poor guy is not a Rays fan because of me.

Well, here we are that night sitting here still in the ER at 5 am and I have been seen by 4 different physician assistants that all concur, I have a blown eardrum. And so I sit until and attending can come in and give the final heave ho to launch my happy butt upstairs for a consultation with a ear, nose and throat guy in 5 hours. So my friends finally leave because they have real jobs, and I am, unemployed, but happily blogger happy on MLBlog.com.

I am sitting up there with my computer and finally finish my part 2 of my MLB Network blog and hit the button to send it via WiFi. Well, if I wanted to use that service in the hospital, it would cost me $ 25 dollars for the connection password. I wonder if that is how the nurses’ party funds get stocked? Just kidding, that was a rule instituted because too many people brought computers in the hospitals and their servers were getting overloaded by just hospital work.

So I just sat there and put things in notepads and typed away until the battery life left the laptop. Well, about an hour after that, the doctor finally got there and prodded me for about 2 minutes before noticing he was in the wrong ear…….got to love our medical system some days. Well he began to try and stretch out my ear, but the pain maxed to 12.5 and he decided to give me a local to knock out my ear area.

That went fine, and after about 30 minutes of staring and thinking and writing in his little report form, he told me lay back and they wanted to give me a full X-ray head scan. I told him the mouse in my head left a month ago, but the rubber bands are working fine. He did not see the humor in that, but the nurse was snickering. So I was pushed and left to be claimed the hallway for an orderly to take me to the Radiology section for naked pictures without my skin.

Well, I came to find out the local was not a local, but was an IV hit of morphine and I was seeing flashbacks of “Apocalypse Now” scenes in my head. And that damn song “Flight of the Valkyries” kept rewinding in my head. Thank goodness the nurse was of Swedish decent, I might of had to frag because of the effects of the drug, I was smelling napalm in the morning. So there I am having naked pictures of my hollow head, while a Swedish nurse props me up like a rag doll on crack. Even though she was 5 foot and 250 pounds, the Don Juan in me went wild.

After I came to an few hours later, the doctor told me he wanted to be sure I did not suffer a concussion since I stated I had 10 previous concussions from football from 1976-1985. He told me that the ear membrane was torn a bit, but would recover in 5-10 days. I would not need to downgrade all my stereo equipment to monotone, and could watch 5.1 surround sound when the hearing came back in a few days. He told me if the sound did not come back by Sunday, come in Monday morning and he will drill a hole in my head and stick a cup with some string to my eardrum.

After he said that, I wondered how long it took him to come up with those one-liners. My flow off the tongue, but his delivery needed work. I did compliment him on his new found humor and he told me I could leave after 2 prescriptions got up there. He did tell me I needed to put ear drops in my ear, but the first few batches would be difficult until the swelling went down. He also sent me home with some antibiotics.

So I flopped on the couch and did not wake up until today about 7 am. I discovered that I left the laptop at the hospital, but they dropped it by a neighbors’ since I did not answer the door. I hope it was not that Swedish nurse looking for a massage buddy, and forgot to write my Christmas Eve blog. I usually like to put my 5 favorite Christmas videos on there, but could not muster the time and effort until tonight/ last night.

So here I am now, asking for everyone at MLBlogs.com, from Mark on down to the newest arrivals to the site to have a safe and glorious Christmas. And since I do not want to be considered religiously biased, Happy Kwanza, which starts today, and Happy Hanukah. I really hope that your day was filled with magic, warmth and the noise of friends and family. I had a house full of people because my roommates 4 kids stooped by to pester me to death and flick my ear a few million times.

So, hopefully starting today I can get caught up and get back into my swing of writing my daily blogs for you all. So without further ado, I am heading back to bed to have visions of sugarplum dance through my head again tonight/today. And since it is Black Friday, I am not going out of the house for fear of Wal-mart and K-Mart shoppers a few blocks away running into each other in the parking lots.

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